‘The future of security is autonomous,’ says Oracle expert
Dragan Petkovic, Security Product Leader ECEMEA at Oracle says the future of security is autonomous and decentralised with blockchain technology

‘The future of security is autonomous,’ says Oracle expert

Dragan Petkovic, Security Product Leader ECEMEA at Oracle, discusses how blockchain technology could help put the end user back in the ‘driving seat’ while Machine Learning and AI help to reduce the cyber-risk of cloud technology.

When I started working in security, over 20 years’ ago, many vendors made claims about passwords being a thing of the past – those vendors are no longer in business but passwords very much are. This observation comes to mind when making future predictions about security.

With security breaches frequently making headline news, it isn’t hard to tell that enterprise security will become job number one and much of it will be automated. Organisations are not getting better at security; they are getting worse. With today’s borderless enterprise, as a result of cloud, mobile and edge technologies like the Internet of Things (IoT), there is a general consensus that there is no such thing as ‘total security’. As a result, business information can no longer be protected by the IT team trying to create digital castles and restrictive access.

We are going to see an increased focus on security, especially with regulations such as GDPR that have come to the play with hefty penalties associated with failure to meet regulatory standards. We can also expect to see more CEOs that come from the cybersecurity space because they know how to manage the risk.

The future is autonomous

We will continue to see more companies turning to the cloud for security – research already shows that the more mature users recognise that cloud provides better security than an on-premise environment.

Alongside this, the increasing complexity of technology and advanced hacking practices, mean that the legacy networks that have been secure for the last 20 years, aren’t any longer.

Gartner also believes that all major security failures will be the customer’s fault and many of the recent failures have proven this.

There’ll be the need for a zero trust-based approach as skills will continue to be scarce, security will increasingly feature Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) capabilities. As Larry Ellison said at Oracle OpenWorld last year, ‘We have to rethink how we defend our information. We need new systems. It can’t be our people versus their computers. We’re going to lose that war. It’s got to be our computers versus their computers. And make no mistake – it’s a war.’

Data driven, emerging technologies like IoT have the potential to make the situation worse.

Others like blockchain may help resolve some of the problems. Indeed, by 2025, autonomous operations will become the catalyst to accelerate enterprise cloud adoption.

By 2020, 95% of cloud operations risk will vanish entirely – a higher degree of intelligent automation will permeate the cloud platform. Using ML and AI techniques, autonomous operations will anticipate outcomes, take remedial action and be aware of real-time risks.

 Blockchain’s promise

Blockchain is emerging as one of today’s most disruptive technologies, with the ability to radically reshape how business is done by enabling secure, efficient and transparent business-to-business transactions. Blockchain is predicted to deliver US$176 billion additional value by 2025 and it’s forecasted that 10% of the global GDP will be stored in blockchain by 2027.

I am a blockchain enthusiast and believe blockchain-based identity will put the user back in the driving seat. In a world where entities will not fully trust each other, blockchain will give users control of how much data they are willing to share.

I strongly believe blockchain is reshaping the whole security industry and will enable public private partnerships. The technology is also ideal for creating trusted device vaults, when we are talking about non-carbon identities, such as IoT devices. There are several identity management projects utilising different blockchain use cases and they will keep evolving.

Cybercrime is becoming increasingly sophisticated and organisations are finding it difficult to effectively detect, prevent and respond to modern cyberattacks. While executives are currently preoccupied with managing revenues and reducing costs, soon security and compliance will be of equal – or even greater – importance.

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